Tuesday, 9 August 2016

But why does Korea have to be separated by so much hatred, weapons and other nonsense? Isn't it basically the same people on both sides?When I was staying with Ryuji and Wiwe, his wife
in Seoul, Korea, I had two great visitors. One of them was a familiar figure, a
favourite from medieval Japan,

who had done
similar things for Korea. Separated by a century, they could never have met but
here they were side by side in my dream. The Japanese Daimyō spoke in a kind
manner. Now, this being a dream, I found myself interrupting the great warlord
with a question “Aren’t you great lords supposed to be in different time
periods and actually enemies?” Patiently, the great warriors smiled and said: “Oh, things are very different when you free
yourself from limited perspectives.”

Without wasting further words, the great Daimyōs
asked me “Korea has been nice to you.
What do you wish for the Korean people in return, one wish?” Then they nodded,
royally signalling that not answering would be unacceptable.

What a question! Hideoshi Toyotami had banned slavery and had used his
army to confiscate all weapons from the peasantry in then Japan, had them
publicly melted into a Buddha statue, thus preventing any violent armed
uprising and through this immensely symbolic act unified Japan. Sejong the
Great created the Hangul alphabet to
give Koreans a distinct identity and repelled invaders by capturing Tsushima.

Here I am, given this immense task, staring
at these figures, regal in presence yet not intimidating, demanding yet
understanding and strangely I did not feel small in their august company. Only
true greatness of spirit can lift another human being out of the innate
smallness the human condition entails.

After the failure of the Sunshine Policies the closest the two Koreas have come to reunification is this selfie at the 2016 Rio Olympics:

On the Southern side, they are the fourth
richest economy in the world, get a huge catch of gold medals in sports, and have
the highest percentage of PhDs per capita in the world, though walking on the
streets it seems that no one is actually thinking ahead because they are all busy
staring into the screens of handheld devices.

On the northern side, they have the fourth
largest army in the world. Survival entails being seen glorifying their rulers
who all have funny haircuts. The Northern system can’t take over the far more
advanced and infinitely richer south. You can’t wish that the ruling gang of
the North would vanish into thin air and the southern system takes over the
country. That would create a horrendous identity crisis that would last two
generations of people battling feelings of “I am better than you because I am
from the south”. As it happened in Germany, twenty years after the Wiedervereinigung, 14% of the older Easterners with nostalgia thought that life behind
the wall was better than life now (Stockemer and Elder, 2015).

Having a joint Korean
system with sharing of power – that doesn’t seem possible even in a dream. East
Germany was physically far from its main supporter, the Soviet Union, which
also collapsed. But, North Korea shares borders with Russia and especially China,
which is flourishing and powerful enough to prevent North Korea being gobbled
by the South. The possibilities for a German style Wiedervereinigung is rather non-existent.

A
Model for Korean Reunification

The
answer came. Following the great Daimyo Hideyoshi’s example, all the weapons on
both sides would be gathered in one place, melted for the metal and the metal
would be used to create a gigantic statue of the Buddha occupying the
demilitarized zone. There would be, following Korean ancient tradition, statues
of four heavenly kings guarding the gates and they would be given funny
haircuts as a symbolic gesture.

The Japanese rational idea in 1910 was to achieve
efficiency of specialisation by concentrating industry in the north and
agriculture in the south. Following this rational principle, the northern people
would be responsible for the technological implementation of construction and technical
maintenance of the 551 metre high statue facing east. To make themselves feel
better, they could paint the Northern side of the statue in battleship grey, strictly
no capitalist colours. The southern side could have traditional Korean colours.
The main body of the statue will contain many walk-on-glass viewing platforms
at over 200-meters. There will be a square on the northern side where people
feeling nostalgic about the North can volunteer to stage hourly parades
goose-stepping in bleak uniforms. The leaders with the funny haircuts would be
given the great honour of integrating the northern perspective in museums all
over the country. The Korean War Museum in Seoul has no mention of the northern
casualties, as if the mothers in the north or children did not feel any pain
when they lost their children or parents in the war.

Then there will be cafés and restaurants
with karaoke, shops, libraries, an opera/theatre, movie theatres and maglev train
connections with Seoul and Pyongyang. The main attraction will be a gigantic 24-hour
Jjimjilbang (찜질방) (run by the
southerners) in the middle of the statue. Seeing each other denuded of uniforms
in a bubble-pool or sauna allows one to see the other as a human being, almost
like us. It’s the black and white or binary perspective that is the real enemy.

In his days, the great Daimiyo had understood
that Western “Christians” saw the world in binary terms, conquer or perish. So
he had them crucified in order to save Japan from becoming their colony. 1854 and
Commodore Perry in Japan would probably have happened much earlier if not for
him. Emulating Hideyoshi Toyotami’s insightful action, all intervention by
outside bankers, weapons dealers and military-industrial complexes (supplying
both sides) and ideology peddlers in the Korean peninsula would be banned from
interfering in Korean affairs and messing with the Korean people: The Korean
brothers and sisters on both sides would be left in peace to work out things in
a Jjimjilbang, not a takeover or political “unification” á la Germania but a
common construction project. In the Jjimjilbangs (찜질방) and 105-floor sky-café’s they would get a
loftier perspective and then discover that together they are better off enjoying
life together than fighting each other with borrowed weapons that just make arms
manufacturers far-away richer.

Then
the kings told me to go to Jongmyo shrine and tell my answer there and
disappeared. There cannot be a military solution. Talking hasn’t helped. Is it
that only a gigantic symbolic action would bring closure to the hatred and heal
the wounds of six decades? Without closure, there is no forward motion, no
realisation of Mono no aware (物の哀れ). The next day, I literally stumbled into Jongmyo. It was a
terribly hot day and I was sweating and sat down in exhaustion. Suddenly, there
was a cool breeze from somewhere, which did not move the leaves of the trees
around but soothed me and left me energized. Sejong the Great and Hideyoshi
Toyotami had accepted my answer.

In the largest Jjimjilbang in the world
and the 105-floor sky-café, Saturday April the 23rd, 2022 is a busy
and peaceful day, isn’t it?

References: Stockemer D, Elder G.(2015). Germans 25 years after reunification –
How much do they know about the German Democratic Republic and what is their
value judgment of the socialist regime? Communist
and Post-Communist Studies. 48 (2-3): pp. 113-22.

Monday, 29 December 2014

Immigrants are a recurring phenomenon in many parts of the world and its importance will only grow in the near future. Immigrants adjust, assimilate or remain alienated and sometimes even become active agents of destruction through terrorism in their host countries.They are either expelled or ordered to
assimilate without fuss in most pull
immigration countries. The simple argument is that if immigrants assimilate to the host society, discrimination decreases, immigrants contribute better according to their abilities and life becomes smoother for everyone. The counter argument is that if immigrants assimilate, they have to relinquish their own heritage and culture in order to adopt the local. This would mean that the host society is not enriched by an infusion of new ideas.

“Every immigrant who comes here should be required
within five years to learn English or leave the country.”

The immigrants’ difficulty of adjusting is
tolerated when the economic, political and social stability in the host country
is high, and as long as there is a perception of current or future benefit from
the immigrant.

But come hard times and the rules of
engagement change. Then immigrants are easily perceived as burdens or threats. The othering of immigrants intensify and
everything wrong with the host country’s economy, society, political atmosphere
and morals are promptly ascribed to the avarice, immorality, stupidity,
insufficient skills or lack of commitment of the newest immigrants. Vulnerable
minorities also get the same treatment sometimes.

Highly skilled foreigners best suited for
demanding jobs get fast-track immigration permits to Canada. Saudi Arabia requires immigrants to go out of the country immediately when job contracts expire.

Canada in the late 19th century
had clear orders of preference. This reflected how similar were the immigrants
to the majority of the people already living there (First Nation people were
not considered in this equation).

A
fairly good definition of Assimilation:
Assimilation, alsocalled integration or incorporation,
is the process by which the characteristics of members of immigrant groups and
host societies come to resemble one another. Resemble is a key word here. It still allows the immigrant to retain vestiges of their own culture and does not necessarily entail total substitution of one set of characteristics with another.

A
politician’s approach at definition of the assimilation situation:

“A
simple way to take measure of a country is to look at how many want in.. And
how many want out.”

- Tony Blair.

Politicians, like economists, try to simplify
things with assumptions that best suit their purposes. The host country’s main
needs-related assumption is that they get the best highest skilled units of
labour at the least input price by allowing selective immigration. It doesn’t
always go that simply.

The entire history of the human race is a
tale of immigration. The most widely accepted theory of how human beings spread
all over the earth is the “Out of Africa” theory or academically “RSOH – recent
single origin hypothesis”. Depending on which theory is currently accepted,
humans have been emigrating and immigrating for the last 1.8 million years. So,
with immense competition, is the playing field ever fair? Here again, it
depends.

“From the day
he left his parents' house, Abe [Reles] had to know his father was right, that
America promises everything, but he also had to know his father was
wrong--America gives nothing. Those things that are promised, they cannot be
worked for but must be taken, conned away with good looks, obsequiousness,
mimicry; or traded for with bit of your soul or the morals of the stories your
parents told; or tricked away with lies; or wrested away with brute force.”

People migrate for different reasons. Some
people fall in love and migrate to live with their loved one. Others go in
search of better jobs or better climate and then some people are forced to
migrate as refugees. “It’s better for me there than here” – is the underlying
belief in all migration. Push factors
explain why a person leaves a certain area, while pull factors explain the choice of destination and typically these
factors complement each other in migration. Considering the coming huge waves of mass migrations to Europe, knowledge of these factors would be valuable in designing suitable win-win responses.

Like all complex questions, this generates
more questions than answers.

Do we have a shared understanding of assimilation? How is it different from integration and adjustment?

What is that to which one is supposed to
assimilate - Frenchness, Americanness or Chineseness such that we can measure
it? If we made tests for immigrants, what happens if a large section of locals
cannot pass these tests? Only 44% of Americans with a college level education
pass the Citizenship test for immigrants.

Does assimilation
necessarily produce better contribution to and engagement with the host
society? Or is the obverse true?

If a high percentage of indigenous (born
locally) people do not assimilate well, can they also be penalised in the same
way as immigrants? Immigrants’ point of entry or deportation are usually
airports, land borders or harbours, so what is the point of entry or
deportation of indigenous people who do not assimilate?

Immigrating or being an immigrant is not something
that one engages in flippantly. Immigrating usually means uprooting your life;
sometimes you lose your property, friends, social connections, means of
livelihood, professional and social influence and even your identity. For some
immigrants life turns for the better and for some others it is the end of
living and the beginning of survival. Being forced to give up their food habits and having to live on English food alone might scare the living daylight out of most immigrants and even Brits in Britain, and the British food scene would lose most of its wonderful diversity. The annual average of£425, that people in UK spend yearly on ethnic food shows that such a horror scenario is extremely unlikely.

Photo source:Peter Salins, in his book Assimilation, American Style (1997), presents 3 criteria for
assimilation:

Immigrants must accept English as the
national language

Work and live by the protestant ethic
(self-reliant, hardworking and morally upright)

Be proud of the American identity and believe
in America’s liberal democratic and egalitarian principles

This kind of dialectic of assimilation is
rather problematic.

Many people also seem to de-assimilate, as
they get older. They might get disillusioned with what they assimilated to and
entertain a nostalgic fondness of what they imagine as having ‘lost’.

Many people have no clear idea how such vague
concepts e.g. protestant ethics
really means and don’t find many locals living it either.

The identity that the host society gives to immigrants may
significantly differ from how they’d like to be seen. A person may want to be
seen as a happy and singing Neapolitan rather than an Italian stereotype or as a successful engineer rather than as a Korean. An
immigrant from Guatemala or Mexico does not necessarily see herself as a “Hispanic” or “Latino”.

Does assimilation mean adopting the thinking patterns of others? I
am reminded almost weekly: “You can’t think like that!” and my response always
is “I just did”. Do we really think thoughts? I’d say that we just register and
react to thoughts coming to the focus of our consciousness.

Then, is assimilation requirement a good thing? Learning the local language and culture brings immense benefits to both sides in the form of improved communication and understanding. Improved communication also might widen the horizons of the locals.

Assimilation is a
sweet thing, like sugar. Too much for some people may cause health (mental)
problems. Since when has being like everyone else made mavericks happy? Too
little and there is no sweetness in your life, probably. Of course, being the
eternal other also may give someone immense kicks and thus assimilation would be a high price. There is a third possibility over total assimilation or zero assimilation - selective assimilation. The immigrant assimilates to a degree that helps with living fulfilling lives yet retains aspects that enriches the new surroundings.Recipe for successful selective assimilation:

Quickly learn the local language and culture

Learn to appreciate and be grateful for all the good things in the host society

Stop finding faults with the host society like many locals do - moaning makes you boring

Find a way to contribute, at least to someone other than yourself - make friends!

Cherish your own culture and cultivate a deeper understanding and then communicate it to the locals who are interested in widening their horizons.

Find something in the new culture to cheer up your daily life - have fun!